Overview of the Print Server Deployment Process

Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1, Windows Server 2003 with SP2

Deploying print servers running the Microsoft® Windows® Server 2003, Standard Edition or Windows® Server 2003, Enterprise Edition operating systems lets your organization share printing resources across the network, allowing client computers to send print jobs to printers attached locally to a print server and to printers accessible across the Internet. Windows Server 2003 provides a number of solutions that can benefit your organization.

Cross-platform printing support   Windows Server 2003 supports printing from Microsoft® Windows® 95, Windows® 98, Windows® Millennium Edition, Windows NT® version 4.0, Windows® 2000, Windows® XP Professional, or UNIX or Linux operating systems.

Increased availability   If your business relies on high availability of network printers, you can cluster print servers or install a standby server to increase print server availability.

Driver versioning   To improve stability, Windows Server 2003 restricts the installation of older printer drivers, which can cause the system to become unresponsive. You can override these restrictions if your network has clients that require older printer drivers.

Consolidation tools   If you have too many print servers to manage efficiently in your current printing environment, you can use the Print Migrator tool to help automate printer consolidation on Windows Server 2003. Instead of recreating all of the printer objects manually, you can back up existing printers and restore them to your new print servers.

Rich printer status reporting   If you use the standard port monitor, you can receive status reports when the printer runs out of paper, runs low on toner, or is stopped by a paper jam.

Easy location of nearby printers   If you implement the Active Directory® directory service, your users can easily find printers that are published in Active Directory based on attributes that you designate.

Improved security   New local Group Policy settings can control which individuals have access to the print queue over the network.

Centralized printer management   Windows Server 2003 lets you remotely manage and configure printers from any computer running Windows Server 2003.

If your current network environment has a mix of clients and print servers running different operating systems, you can improve the interoperability, availability, and efficiency of your print servers by properly designing your new printing environment. After the design team creates a design, and the deployment team implements that design in a test lab, you are ready to deploy your new Windows Server 2003 print servers in a production environment.

Effectively deploying print servers that run Windows Server 2003 is a three-phase process, as illustrated in Figure 3.1.

Figure 3.1   Designing and Deploying Print Servers

A print server design team completes the first two phases: examining your current environment and designing a new printing environment. During these phases, the design team collects information that is vital to the deployment process, determines your immediate and long-term printing needs, recommends improvements to the printing environment, and creates an appropriate printing strategy.

A print server deployment team completes the final phase of the deployment process by implementing the design team’s decisions. The deployment team’s responsibilities include adding printing capabilities to existing or newly created clustered servers, installing Windows Server 2003 on the print servers, creating the printers, and ensuring that clients receive the required printer connections.

Note

• For a list of the job aids that are available to assist you in deploying print servers, see "Additional Resources for Designing and Deploying Print Servers" later in this chapter.